aspiration, virtue; which has existed before the body and will exist after it; which chooses for itself an upward or downward path; and which rightly tends to a celestial and immortal destiny. The thought never won universal acceptance even among philosophers; it had only an indirect and slight effect on the Stoicism which was the best religious product of ancient philosophy. But it wrought by degrees all effect on the thinking of mankind. While the lofty faith of the Egyptian passed away leaving no visible fruit, the idea of Plato slowly suffused with its light and warmth the current of human aspirations. Meantime, the later Jewish belief in a hereafter--in its form a much cruder conception of a physical revival from the grave--flamed up in a passionate ardor, as the sequence of the life and teaching of Jesus. The Platonic and the Christian belief sprang from a like source. Each was born from the death of a man so great and so beloved as to give the impression of some imperishable quality. Socrates, with his noble character and aim, was put to death as a criminal. Was that the end of it all? Impossible--monstrous--never, if this world be indeed a cosmos. The one firm certainty which Socrates seems to have held, "No evil can happen to a good man in life or death,"--flashes in Plato's mind into a glorious hope of immortality, embodied in his loftiest passage, the picture of the dying Socrates. The soul when withdrawn from all outward objects and rapt in contemplation is nearest to the divine,--this is the central thought of the Phaedo. It is pursued with much subtle argumentation, of which the essential residuum is this: the soul's action is purest and most intense when farthest withdrawn from the visible and tangible world,--and hence we guess that her true and eternal home is in that invisible realm of which all this material universe is but the veil and symbol. But more impressive than the argument, more moving to the human heart, is the picture which is given of Socrates himself as the hour of death comes on,--the exaltation of all his familiar traits, the playfulness so exquisitely blent with seriousness, the searching thought, the frank human desire to be convinced by his own argument,--the charm of his friendly ways, the hand playing with Phaedo's hair, the taking of the cup "in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color, looking at the man with all his eyes as his manner was,"--the last word, of calm reminder of a trivial obligation,--the whole scene of majestic and tender peace, like a sunset. It is a scene which reconciles us to life, and makes us no longer impatient even of our uncertainties. It speaks with a voice like that of Landor's verse:-- "Death stands above me, whispering low, I know not what into my ear, Of his strange language all I know Is,--there is not a word of fear."